Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Passengers Waving (Sinking not Waving)

Couldn't you just scream sometimes? Everything seems to be going to plan then a small error blows up in your face. With hindsight it all seems so obvious, but then if I had prior hindsight...

First up, we are fabricating the curved bits of footplate, front and rear and then inserting them along with the representation of the frames at the front:

Simple enough, no? No. My first error had been in the placement of the valances (see earlier post). These were too far back. Only slightly, granted, and mostly due to the relation between them and the front buffer beam. Also there are no tab/slots to guide placement. I should have been alerted when the front lamp irons were slightly skewed backwards when the front curved footplate was fitted. As a result, the rear curve sat behind the main footplate and not under it.

The cab was folded up and a trail insertion made. I expected this to be tight, but it was nigh on impossible to insert the footsteps through the slots and then get the cab to sit down flat; the curve on the cab repeatedly fouled the bend in the footplate.

The result was that I had to unsolder the valances and squeeze them forward a smidgen (all good technical terms, I know!) before reseating the rear curved footplate. All a bit hair-raising and the end result is not quite the perfection one would aim for, but now that the cab overlays are in place (photos to follow) the outcome is more than acceptable. Meantime here are the bare bones pictures. The gap evident here seems ghastly; it is less so now the cab overlays are done. Honest!